The Blog of Rachel Pollack

My dear and brilliant friend, Callan, introduced me to this wonderful service, and helped me set up an account. She has been making suggestions, and adding links. Her own blog, callan.wordpress.com, is a model of honest (& painful) insight.

Now, as i have begun to post a few ideas, others have begun to come forward, and I am very honored to have their comments. Alex Cheevery kindly mentioned me on his blog.

Alex is the author of Edinburgh, a novel about healing from child molestation that is simultaneously very sad and very passionate. It's one of those first novels that leaves many of us oldtimers figuring it's time to put away the pen and get a job as a dishwasher.

I met Alex teaching at Goddard College.It has been a pleasure of the job getting to know him. He is warm and brilliant, with eclectic tastes (like me, he likes comics and fantasy novels as well as more "serious" literature). The first semester we were there together he passed around some great photos of his wild younger days (I'll leave him to describe them).

The next semester was my Alex Chee residency. At Goddard we do most of the work of the semester from home, through the mail, but we all meet at the beginning of the semester on the campus in Vermont.

That semester Alex and I were on the panel to open the residency with a keynote address (if I ever do my book on writing–i already have the title, Fearless–I will include some of the keynotes I've given). We then went on to do a "publishing panel" together.

At the end of the week I was scheduled to give the commencement address for the graduating class. I was unsure between two topics and I asked Alex. He said "why don't you read the cards?" So I did, and the images spoke powerfully to the subject. I'm sure some of the spouses or parents of graduates were thinking "They have a Tarot reader give the commencement address?"

Alex has moved on to a real teaching job, and all of us at Goddard will miss him.

I plan to do a post on Goddard, and its amazing program for the Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing. For now, I just want to say that if you are serious about writing, and want to challenge yourself, and even more, transform yourself, think about coming to Goddard, http://www.goddard.edu/academic/MFA_Writing.html. It's an amazing experience.

One final comment. I will be at Omega for a week starting two days from now, so things might be dormant here for awhile. But I look forward to coming back, and especially look forward to your comments.